Friday, 17 May 2013

This week sees the conclusion of a three-year criminal investigation into the Dutch crane company, Riwal, accused of complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity in the occupied West Bank.
The case is unprecedented as it is the first time a company has been
criminally investigated for involvement in the Israeli occupation.

Although the case has not resulted in a prosecution, it is
nonetheless an important step for those seeking justice for human rights
abuses committed against Palestinians. The case sends a clear message
to the corporate sector: complicity in Israel’s occupation potentially
carries the risk of criminal prosecution.

The case started with a complaint submitted to the Dutch prosecutor by the Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq in March 2010. The complaint documented the involvement of Riwal’s cranes and aerial platforms in constructing Israel’s wall and illegal settlements
in the West Bank. It prompted the prosecutor to launch a large-scale
investigation into the company’s activities, including a raid on company
headquarters in September 2010.

The investigation established that the company contributed to
constructing the wall and settlements in at least six incidents
mentioned in the complaint. However, the prosecutor cited various
considerations, including the complexity of the case, limited resources
and the likely lack of cooperation by Israel in obtaining further
evidence, as reasons not to pursue a prosecution. There is a right of
appeal against the prosecutor’s decision, which can also be reconsidered
if circumstances change or in light of new evidence.

Significant

Despite the lack of prosecution, the decision by the prosecutor to
open the investigation, and to pursue it for as long he did, is legally
significant. It means the prosecutor accepted two assertions at the
heart of the complaint. First, the construction of the wall and
settlements in the occupied West Bank entails the commission of war
crimes. Second, that companies involved in this construction may be
complicit in, and hence legally responsible for, those crimes.

The case therefore supports the assertions that have been made by
lawyers and human rights groups for years: not only is the building of
the wall and settlements by Israel illegal and criminal, so is
complicity with that construction. Those responsible should be open to
prosecution in the correct legal forum.
It undermines the charge often made by Israel and its supporters that
legal challenges of this kind merely represent “lawfare” — that is
vexatious, politicized attempts to abuse the law in order to
“delegitimize” Israel.

Increasing trend

The Riwal case reflects an increasing trend of legal challenges
brought by victims and human rights groups against Israel’s violations.
Recent years have seen a case in the United States against Caterpillar for its supply of militarized bulldozers to the Israeli army. In Canada, residents of the West Bank village of Bilin
brought a case against the companies Green Park and Green Mount
International for constructing an Israeli settlement on village land.

There have also been several arrest warrant applications in European
countries against visiting Israeli officials for their involvement in
war crimes — including a successful application against Tzipi Livni in England in 2009.

Asymmetrical battle

These cases reflect the belief that not only are victims of war
crimes entitled to legal redress, but that accountability for Israeli
crimes and abuses is an essential prerequisite to achieving a just and
lasting resolution to the conflict. The Israel-Palestine conflict is,
after all, an asymmetrical battle between a powerful, highly militarized
state enforcing a colonial occupation of land that does not belong to
it, and an indigenous people fighting against occupation for
self-determination.

Accountability for the crimes that are integral to maintaining the
occupation is not only right in principle, it constitutes a serious
incentive to Israel to desist in its practices. Accountability is
essential for achieving a just and lasting peace.

The ad hoc nature of these cases, however — they are
invariably brought by victims and human rights groups in domestic
jurisdictions — and the absence of a properly resourced, large-scale
investigation of Israel’s crimes at the international level, is a result
of the impunity accorded to Israel by the US and its allies.
The report of the UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict (the Goldstone report) concludes there was evidence that war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity had been committed by both sides during Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s military assault on Gaza in 2008-09. It recommends the situation be referred to the International Criminal Court
(ICC). To date this recommendation has not been acted on and a referral
to the ICC would almost certainly be vetoed by the US in the UN
Security Council.

Right direction

Also ignored is the International Court of Justice’s
ruling in 2004 that the West Bank wall is illegal and must be
dismantled and that the international community must ensure that any
obstacle to Palestinian self-determination caused by the wall be brought
to an end.

Finally, Palestine’s application in 2009 to the ICC for it to
investigate war crimes committed in Palestine since 2002 (the date the Rome Statute of the ICC came into force) was rejected.

Within the context of this crisis of accountability, the Riwal case
is a positive development. The case did not result in justice for the
victims and much more needs to be done. However, it demonstrates that
allegations of complicity in Israel’s occupation by foreign companies
are a serious legal matter that can potentially result in prosecution.

The case may deter other companies from complicity with Israel’s
illegal and criminal occupation practices. It is a step in the right
direction in the pursuit of justice and accountability.

Salma Karmi-Ayyoub is a criminal barrister. She headed an
international litigation project at the Palestinian human rights
organization Al-Haq, where she worked on the Riwal case.

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Jewish eugenics pre-dates Hitler's Master Race According to the Israeli daily newspaper quoted below, before the Nazi Third Reich in Germany plotted to create a Master Race from the European gene pool, Zionists had already established a racial purification program to create the perfect Jewish bloodline. More

From the horse's mouth:

"Our race is the Master Race. We are divine gods on this planet. We are as different from the inferior races as they are from insects. In fact, compared to our race, other races are beasts and animals, cattle at best. Other races are considered as human excrement. Our destiny is to rule over the inferior races. Our earthly kingdom will be ruled by our leader with a rod of iron. The masses will lick our feet and serve us as our slaves." -- Menachem Begin (Israeli Prime Minister, 1977-1983. Nobel Prize Winner for...Peace!)

At the dawn of civilization, the blood rite, in which human blood is drunk from the body of a still-living victim, was known to many tribes. However, only one people, that has never progressed beyond the Stone Age, has continued to practice the blood rite and ritual murder. This people are known to the world as Jews.

The author of this book is not Christian, Muslim or Hindu but a Jew and is the son of the Chief Rabbi of Rome, and a professor of Jewish Renaissance and Medieval History at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, just outside Tel Aviv.

The following translation was performed free of charge to protest an injustice: the destruction by the ADL of Ariel Toaff’s BLOOD PASSOVER on Jewish ritual murder.

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They cut this Palestinian kid's arms for "throwing Stones" before murdering him

Repeat: The author is the son of the Chief Rabbi of Rome, and a professor of Jewish Renaissance and Medieval History at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, just outside Tel Aviv.

Dr. Toaff is uniquely qualified to write this book, being thoroughly familiar with the derivative literature in English, French, German and Italian, as well as the original documentary sources in Latin, Medieval Italian, Hebrew and Yiddish. This is not something he worked on in secret. On the contrary, he worked on it openly with his university students and colleagues in Israel for several years; one of his students was even going to publish a paper on the subject. The author is extremely careful about what he says, and his conclusions must be taken seriously. It reads like a detective story.

If it had been published in Israel, in Hebrew, no one would have cared. There are large bodies of literature in Hebrew that Jews do not wish Gentiles to know about. But Dr. Toaff’s announcement of its publication in Italy, in Italian, raised a worldwide firestorm of fury. Under unbearable pressure, the book was withdrawn from publication, and is not to be re-issued.

You can strike a blow against censorship by circulating this text by e-mail or posting in on the Internet. No one can sue hundreds of people.

If the text is all over the Internet, and everybody has it and everybody knows what is in it, the cat will be out of the bag, and it will have to be published – sooner or later.

"When I open the police files I find detailed reports about Jewish criminals. The archives have enough
material for 100 historians and for 100 years, and even then they won't finish." -- Haartez News. Jerusalem, Tuesday, November 2,2004

1 - Since being branded an "anti-Semite" has become quite a stigma, placing in jeopardy the individual's economic and social welfare, should not the phrase be exactly and rationally defined? Inevitably someone is going to be mislabeled sometime. And yet the arch-Zionist Anti-Defamation League of Banai B'rith, which usually has charge of wielding the branding iron, has repeatedly refused to answer queries from this committee asking for such a definition. We have sadly concluded by wondering whether that "upright" organization should not more accurately be called the Anti-Definition League!

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2 - What is a "Semite"? Is it or is it not a member of a racial group? According to the prevailing Jewish authority, Jewry is a religious group only, with no racial (i.e., genetic) identity. Yet they continue tacitly to endorse a 19th century racialist conception of themselves every time they label an opponent "anti-Semitic." In order to get United Nations approval of a measure condemning religious discrimination recently, the so-called State of Israel gravely assented to having the word "anti-Jewish" substituted for "anti-Semitic." If the two are synonymous to any extent, would it not be more accurate if all Jewish organizations similarly dropped the meaningless and racist designation "anti-Semitic" in favor of "anti-Jewish"?

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3 - As we have seen, the majority of today's Jews are not descendants of the Old Testament Hebrews but of a Mongolian people of Central Asia called Khazars. These people were fairly recent converts to Judaism, as Arthur Koestler and earlier writers have shown. Yet, the non-Semitic Mongolian "Jews" are by far the most powerful in Jewish and Zionist affairs, and are the ones who quickest raise the cry of "anti-Semitism" against ideas or activities that irritate them. In the interest of historical accuracy, should not this peculiar but evidently necessary vocabulary of swear-words be enriched by the term "anti-Khazar"? At the very least, should not intelligent people realize that anti-Zionism does not equal "anti-Semitism"?

The Six Million Reconsidered, Committee for Truth in History, Historical Review Press

"The Jewish people as a whole will become its own Messiah. It will attain world dominion by the dissolution of other races, by the abolition of frontiers, the annihilation of monarchy and by the establishment of a world republic in which the Jews will everywhere exercise the privilege of citizenship. In this New World Order the "children of Israel" will furnish all the leaders without encountering opposition. The Governments of the different peoples forming the world republic will fall without difficulty into the hands of the Jews. It will then be possible for the Jewish rulers to abolish private property and everywhere to make use of the resources of the state. Thus will the promise of the Talmud be fulfilled, in which is said that when the Messianic time is come, the Jews will have all the property of the whole world in their hands."